Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  Chief Bronson grunts. “Very good. If you know that, then you know that de-escalation is much harder to teach than throwing punches — which is why I want to use you selectively. We’re getting into wintertime. That means we’re dealing less with burglaries and assaults and more with domestics, drunk drivers, and shoplifters as Christmas gets close. I don’t need you to worry about that sort of thing.”

  “If we’re not here to be police officers, why are we here?” I say.

  “To support my people who are still here, not replace the ones who aren’t. I don’t expect you to stand around doing nothing if you see a citizen in trouble, but your primary responsibility will be to act as extra sets of eyes and ears for my officers and let them handle things whenever possible. The purpose of tonight’s ride-along is to familiarize you with what we do so, if I do make the decision to add you to the patrol roster, you’ll be able to work harmoniously with my officers.”

  From there the chief gives us a brief overview of how the department operates during a typical day — routine procedures conducted as part of an officer’s patrol, call response protocols, processing suspects in custody, stuff like that. He shows us on a large map in the dispatch center how Kingsport is broken down into sectors for the purposes of assigning patrols and dispatching officers, and he points out certain roads and neighborhoods his people patrol regularly. After that he shows us the holding cell area, which is cramped and gray and smells of lemon-scented ammonia. The other end of the holding area exits into a small garage, where the cruisers come to transfer prisoners to the holding area for booking. The final stop on our tour is the motor pool behind the police station. There are a lot of empty parking spaces. Several cruisers are out for repair and will be for some time, the chief says.

  “As I’ve mentioned, we’ll have two cruisers out on third shift, which will begin —” Chief Bronson checks his watch. “— in approximately fifteen minutes. Which of you will be joining us this evening?”

  We clump together for a quick meeting. “Christina’s not expecting me home tonight,” I say, “so I can take one of the spots.”

  “I want the other,” Matt says. “Is that cool?”

  “Yeah, that’s cool,” Stuart says. Missy makes a noise that is more I don’t care than Sure, go ahead.

  My partner for the evening is Sergeant Luisa Prescott — Sgt. Scotty among her colleagues, Lu to her friends. She’s my height plus an inch or two, has a sturdy build that appears deceptively bulkier because of her winter uniform coat, and her dark hair is shot through with threads of premature silver.

  “Sergeant,” I say, shaking her hand. Firm grip.

  “Psyche, is it?” she says. Her breath clouds up in the night air. “You ready to hit the road?”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  “‘Yes, sergeant.’” She smiles at the chief. “You gave me a good one,” she says. “All right, Psyche. Let’s go serve and protect.”

  ***

  Third shift is ten PM until six AM. If I make it through the night, I’ll finish the shift with — hey, a whole hour to spare before I have to go to school! Lucky me.

  Kingsport is pretty dead right off the bat. Except for the bars, convenience stores, a liquor store or two, and a few restaurants, everything is closed for the night. Consequently, there isn’t much traffic to speak of. The cold tends to keep people inside, Sgt. Prescott says, which is both good and bad.

  “Most folks who’d normally be up to no good would rather stay in where it’s warm,” she says, “but ‘round about January, people start to get a touch of cabin fever. Makes folks cranky and quick-tempered.”

  “The chief said domestics go up in the winter,” I say.

  “They do. The holidays aren’t quite as bad as people believe — it’s a myth about suicides going up — but you take people who’ve been stuck in the house for days, add some holiday stress, stir in some alcohol, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a knock-down-drag-out. Dealing with domestics is never fun, for anyone.”

  “Mm.”

  She glances over at me, sitting in her passenger’s seat under my hooded cloak. Here it comes.

  “How old are you?”

  In my most respectful tone I say, “I’d rather keep that to myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because whenever people ask me how old I am, their follow-up is always some patronizing remark about how I’m too young to be doing this sort of thing. I’m getting tired of people judging me by my age.”

  “I wasn’t going to patronize you or judge you. I just wanted to learn a little about someone who I might have to trust to watch my back.”

  Nice jump to a conclusion there, Sara.

  “I’m sixteen.”

  Sgt. Prescott’s eyebrows rise. “Sixteen? Huh. I had you pegged at eighteen or nineteen.”

  “This job ages you prematurely.”

  “Ha. I feel you. I joined the Kingsport PD when I was twenty-three. Found my first gray hair when I was twenty-five. They’ve made a lot of friends over the last twelve years.”

  I crack a smile. We’re bonding. Bonding’s good.

  Then she ruins it with her next question. “Do your parents know you do this?”

  “My parents are dead.”

  I feel scummy saying that, but the truth is too long and too complicated, and I frankly don’t feel like sharing that part of my life with a complete stranger. Besides, I rationalize, the lie and the truth aren’t that far apart.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  It’s such a sincere and heartfelt condolence it makes the guilt of lying to her instantly unbearable. “My foster mother knows. She’s not entirely okay with it. She understands why I do it but she worries about me.”

  Sgt. Prescott nods. “My mother calls me every day after my shift to make sure I’m still alive. Even on my days off, she calls me,” she says. “Why do you do this? Does it have anything to do with your parents?”

  I take a moment to consider how to say it without lying again. Sgt. Prescott seems nice; I want to be as honest with her as I can.

  “They’re not why I started,” I say. “My friends and I, we all have these powers, and we felt like we had an obligation to use them to do some good in the world. It’s not much more complicated than that.”

  “Right, your powers. You’re a mind reader? Is that right?”

  “Partially. I’m a telepath, an empath, and a telekinetic. It’s easier if you call me a psionic. That’s the general term for people with psychic abilities.”

  “A psionic,” she repeats, feeling out the word. “Read my mind. What am I thinking?”

  I go rigid. “No. I don’t like to do that.”

  “You can read minds but you don’t like to?”

  “Yeah. No. I mean, I communicate telepathically with my teammates all the time but I don’t like to go into people’s brains unless I absolutely have to. It’s intrusive.”

  “Come on, Psyche, I’m curious. Go ahead, take a peek. You have my permission.”

  She’s not going to let this go. Fine. One very quick peek to indulge her.

  “You’re singing ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from Les Misérables,” I say. “Off-key, for some reason.”

  Sgt. Prescott grins at me. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t make a lucky guess.”

  “You a fan of the show?”

  “I’ve seen eight productions,” she boasts. “Three in New York, four in Boston, and a surprisingly good production the Kingsport Theatre Guild put on last year.”

  “I’m jealous. I’ve never had a chance to see it live. I’ve only seen the movie version.”

  She makes a disgusted noise. “Whoever decided putting Russell Crowe in that movie was a good idea should be beaten with a rubber hose.”

  I laugh. “Agreed.”

  A call from dispatch ruins our little moment. Possible intoxicated motorist on Main Street, near the town green, heading due south. White Ford, vanity license plate reading WATUPP.

  “Our fir
st nibble of the night,” Sgt. Prescott says. “Let’s go see what’s happening.”

  ***

  Not much happened.

  The possibly intoxicated motorist with the ridiculous vanity plate was actually some idiot trying to text and drive. He got ticketed, as did the guy Sgt. Prescott caught roaring down Main Street at fifty miles per hour at one in the morning soon after the bars closed down. Around three she ousted a group of obnoxious guys hanging out at the 7-Eleven, and a few minutes after that, she responded to a report of a suspicious noise outside an old woman’s home. The old woman in question apparently calls in suspicious noises on an almost nightly basis. Sometimes it’s a raccoon scavenging out of her garbage, but most of the time, it’s nothing. She’s an old lady living alone, and she gets scared, Sgt. Prescott said. She calls the police, they show up and take a walk around the property, assure her everything’s fine, and she goes back to bed feeling safe and secure. That’s a lot of what police work is, according to the sergeant: responding to nonissues and offering words of assurance that everything’s cool, although there’s less of that during the graveyard shift and more driving around and checking in on particular neighborhoods and business areas with a track record of trouble. That’s mostly what we did.

  Oh, yes, and a little after midnight, we received to a BOLO (Be On the LookOut) for a possible runaway teen. White male, black hair, blue eyes, five-foot-nine, approximately one hundred sixty pounds, last seen wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a black leather winter coat with a hood. Answers to the name Matthew William Steiger.

  Sgt. Prescott asked me if I knew him from school. I pretended to think for a minute before replying with a casual, “No, I don’t think so.”

  As our shift draws to a close, Sgt. Prescott treats me to coffee at the Coffee Experience. Jill the Goddess of Caffeine is on duty, which makes for an awkward encounter. I keep my hood down so she can’t see my face, speak in a low, ominous whisper to disguise my voice, and order a plain old large coffee instead of my usual latté.

  We return to the station, arriving at the same time as Matt and his partner for the night. I can tell from his posture he’s as tired as I am. School is going to be such fun.

  “Psyche, thanks for being such a good partner,” Sgt. Prescott says, extending a hand. “Anytime you want to do this again, let the chief know. I’d be happy to have you along for the ride.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Prescott,” I say. “I learned a lot last night. I appreciate it.”

  “Sergeant Scotty,” she corrects.

  Our partners head inside to file their paperwork, a duty they’ve thoughtfully left us out of. Matt slumps against the cruiser.

  “Educating. Enlightening. Frickin’ exhausting,” he says.

  “Oh, yeah. Anything interesting happen?”

  “Caught a guy throwing a soda can out his car window. Gave him a ticket. Sat in the parking lot of some seedy bar in North Kingsport around closing time, looking for possible drunk drivers. Didn’t see any. Oh, we assisted a woman with a flat tire — by which I mean we sat in the cruiser and kept her company while she waited for a tow truck. That was pulse-pounding.”

  “I suppose we should be grateful things were quiet.”

  “Yeah, I think we’ve filled our excitement quota for the next decade or two.” Matt’s sigh turns into a yawn. “We have time to grab some breakfast before school.”

  “I like it. Let’s go.”

  We climb into Matt’s car and drive into the middle of the empty rec center parking lot next door, which is the most privacy we’re going to find. I climb over the seat and into the back to change. Matt starts to strip out of his uniform.

  “Matt! There you are!” I say with mock relief. “Did you know you were reported as a possible runaway?”

  He groans. “I can’t believe Dad did that. He knew I was going on an overnight ride-along.”

  “Can I ask you something? Have you done anything, like, normal with your parents since you told them?”

  “What do you mean, normal?”

  “Normal. You know — normal. Helped them with household chores. Watched TV with them. Had a completely boring, mundane, not-at-all-super-hero-oriented conversation with them?”

  “No,” Matt says like it’s a stupid question. He doesn’t get it.

  “You should. Tonight, you should go home after work, sit down and have dinner with them, and pretend for one night that you’re not a super-hero. Pretend you’re a regular teenager with regular teenage problems.”

  He frowns at me. Still doesn’t get it. Jeez, Matt, come on.

  “You just shoved your parents into the deep end of an insane swimming pool,” I say. “Yes, the big reason they’re acting out is because they’re concerned for your well-being, but it’s also because this is all totally weird to them and they don’t know how to react to any of it. They need something familiar to help keep them grounded. They need some normalcy — and I mean their kind of normalcy, not our kind. Indulge them.”

  He gives me a doubtful look, but he doesn’t argue the point. Good, because on this one, I know I’m absolutely, positively, one hundred percent right. The Steigers would really benefit from a healthy dose of the mundane.

  You know what? So would I. And more caffeine. Definitely more caffeine.

  I finish wrestling into my street clothes. “There was talk of breakfast?”

  “Indeed there was.” Matt starts the car back up. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  It’s a rough day. Breakfast gets me off to a strong start, but after the first hour or so, my energy levels surge and crash at irregular intervals. For a while I’ll feel fine, wide awake and alert, and then I come dangerously close to passing out at my desk. More than one teacher asks me if I’m sick.

  It’s a reasonable assumption; I look sick. Every time I go into the girls’ bathroom, I see a pasty, raccoon-eyed zombie staring back at me from the mirror. It’s like I’m looking through time and seeing myself as I was a year ago. It’s sobering.

  My LGBTQ group isn’t meeting today, so I get to go right home after school. I force myself to stay awake long enough to shower, and then I head to bed. I fall asleep immediately and stay asleep until someone knocks at my door.

  “Sara? You okay?”

  “Huh?” Oh, it’s Christina. “Yeah. Fine. Napping.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I wanted to let you know dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

  I glance at my alarm clock. It’s past six. The simple act of realizing what time it is sets my stomach to growling. “No, it’s cool. Be down in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  I sit up and lick my lips, tasting the film of exhaustion coating my mouth inside and out. Blech. Tastes like I’ve been chewing on an old sock. I plod downstairs and head for the kitchen, following the smell of leftover manicotti reheating in the microwave. Don’t care if we’re having leftovers. Any Christina Hauser food is good Christina Hauser food.

  “Ben,” I say, pleasantly surprised. “Hey. How’re you doing?”

  “Sara. Hello. I’m fine,” he says with an odd note in his voice I can’t quite place.

  “Could you give us a minute?” Christina says to Ben. He heads into the living room, constantly glancing at me as he passes.

  Oh no. Oh, no, Christina, please don’t say it.

  “Ben and I had a rather lengthy discussion at lunch today,” she begins.

  “You told him,” I croak, my throat suddenly dry and tight.

  “...I had to.”

  “You —? No. No no no,” I jabber. The tightness in my throat creeps down into my chest and my heartbeat jacks up to a thousand beats a second.

  “Sara, I haven’t spoken to Ben once since Carrie disappeared. He knew something was wrong. I had to tell him something.”

  “We had a cover story! That’s what you could have told him!”

  “I could have lied to him, you mean. I chose to tell him the truth. I trust him, and I need someone I can talk to a
bout this.”

  “You have Dr. Quentin! That’s why I brought her over, so you’d have someone to talk to!”

  “I’m not in a relationship with Dr. Quentin, am I?” Christina snaps back. “Like it or not, Sara, Ben’s an important part of my life now, which makes him part of Carrie’s — and yours. You have to trust him.”

  “But I don’t trust him!” I say, my panic attack turning into a tantrum. I let it happen. I’m too tired and too stressed out to restrain myself. “I don’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, and considering this is my life and my secret, I should be the one who decides who gets to know the truth, not you!”

  Ben charges back in, ready to take me to task for mouthing off to Christina. I round on him and pin him in place with a glare.

  “You,” I say, jabbing a finger at him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’re going to act like you never heard a single word of anything Christina said about me. Got it?”

  “Excuse me, are you threatening me?” Ben says.

  “Threatening you?” I say with a manic laugh. “No, Ben, I’m warning you. There are people in this world who want me dead. You say the wrong thing to the wrong person and you’re basically serving me up to some psycho on a silver platter — and they’d have no problem going through you to get to me.”

  I know. Yesterday I told my friends having a public identity was no big deal, and today I’m claiming it’s a huge deal, but Ben is another leak in a dam that’s cracking faster than I can plug it. If I need to scare him in order to guarantee his silence, so be it. My only other option is one I will not take. I don’t care how desperate I get; tampering with his mind is not and never will be on the table.

  “I’m not going to say anything to anybody,” Ben says. “I understand this is your secret and it’s an important one. I’m not going to breathe a word of it to anyone, I promise. You can trust me.”

  Like I said, I don’t have much choice in the matter, do I?

  ***